First there was Time Magazine touting Vermont secessionism and the Second Vermont Republic. Now Thomas Naylor's latest article at CounterPunch.org - "The Politics of VIolence in America" - takes on a leading Vermont "progressive." And on top of it all, those rebelling Arabs are just the leading edge of a rising sunspot cycle whose energizing effects may turn millions of Americans into secessionists over the next few years. Unionists in Vermont and nationwide may not be gnashing their teeth yet, but give them another year! Two high octane quotes:
.. To illustrate how absurd the politics of violence is consider the case of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who now refers to himself as “the most progressive member of the United States Senate.” So progressive is Sanders that he currently supports: (1) all funding for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, (2) the deployment of Vermont National Guard troops abroad, (3) military aid for the apartheid state of Israel, (4) the replacement of the Vermont Air National Guard’s F-16 fighter jets with F-35s, and (5) the highly racist war on terror. He is also promoting a Vermont-based satellite station to be designed and built by the U.S. government-owned Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia designs, builds, and tests weapons of mass destruction.
Unfortunately, Sanders, who claims to be a socialist, does not stand alone in the hypocrisy which he brings to the culture of violence. Like many of his other left-wing Democratic colleagues in the Congress, Sanders is an unconditional apologist for the Pentagon and the right-wing Likud government of Israel.
As Naylor says, this criticism could be made against almost every other Demopublican in Congress. He certainly takes a different tack in Time magazine saying that Second Vermont Republic is a "left-libertarian, anti-big government, anti-empire, antiwar, with small is beautiful as our guiding philosophy." (Note that Time gives the Vermont secession movement its own page as one of the Top Ten Aspiring Nations.)
Anyway, dealing with violence even within our own movements is just one of several issues Secessionists and Decentralists have to deal with. See some of my older blog entries exploring others:
* Issues in Secession
* Liberty and Democracy as Antidotes to Sectarian Secessionism